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Let your images talk for your products in your Amazon Product Ads

When you are selling online, you can’t always rely on your winning personality to carry your sale through. The only thing that will make your Amazon product ad dynamic is a thoroughly awesome product image. Not just “kind of” awesome—thoroughly awesome.

Your reputation as an online seller will hinge on whether that picture is worth a thousand words, since you often have limited description space in which to describe your item. Let your picture do the talking so that you can type less.

In this post we will tell you how to optimize your online sales using Amazon Product Ads. You may be familiar with Amazon Sponsored Products, which is a different tool Amazon offers to promote your products in this marketplace, driving traffic to your product page in Amazon. On the other side, advertising your products using Amazon Product Ads will drive traffic and sales directly to your website.

We hope you enjoy the following recommendations to getting your images ready to sell on your Amazon Product Ads!

This how Amazon Product Ads look like

Learn The Rules and Guidelines

First off, you need to find out what Amazon requires of you as a seller. There are plenty of guidelines and tutorials to help you to hit the ground running. One of the most important rules included in Amazon’s downloadable seller’s guide is that every product image must be photographed against a pure white background so as to showcase the product properly. If you don’t have access to a professional photography studio or the advanced picture editing software needed to make a product photographed on a white background look its best, then you might consider outsourcing your image editing tasks to the experts at Pixelz. It’s quite infuriating for someone who hasn’t taken the equivalent of a college course in Photoshop to turn a mediocre image into a stellar one, so you may find that your time and sanity is too valuable to waste clicking your mouse furiously and trying to figure out how to make your image look the way that you want it to.

Specific Amazon Image Guidelines

Other requirements to have great Amazon Product Ads are that images should show the entire product and shouldn’t contain any distracting text or watermarks. The products themselves should take up at least 85% of image space, and the image should be sized to 500 pixels on one side, so that prospective buyers can clearly see your product enough to make an educated decision about whether or not to purchase it. Amazon’s seller’s guide actually suggests that you size your product images at 1000 x 1000 pixels because the bigger, sharper, and more brightly colored your image is, the higher the quality of the Amazon product ad.

In the following infographic you can get a clear idea of the elements you need to know to have quality and compliant images for your Amazon Product Ads.

You Decide: Which Amazon Product Ad is Better?

Presented here for your judgement are exhibits A, B, and C. See if you can determine which product image fits Amazon’s standards and best flatters its product.

Example A

Example B

Example C

In the first image, we see a travel coffee mug. It may be brand new and the seller may have posted it at a great price, but this photo leaves us feeling like we are deciding what to purchase at a yard sale or secondhand store. This image would not pass Amazon’s requirements, for even though the product takes up about 85% of image space, the background is not pure white.

The second image was photographed with lovely lighting and atmosphere, but the image doesn’t work for Amazon. The background is nice for a lifestyle shot, but Amazon requires a pure white background, so no dice. The third image is exactly the type of image an Amazon Product Ad should show. There are no distractions in the image and the background has been completely removed to white. The product is the star of the show—and isn’t that how it should be?

Let’s play through this scenario one more time. Below is a second set of three images for your perusal. Try again to pick out the good from the bad.

Example A

Example B

Example C

What’s wrong with the first image? Easy. It’s a great close-up shot and it’s decently bright and sharp, but the busy background distracts from the detail of the soldier’s uniform. The image also fails to show the entire product, and that’s the second image’s downfall as well. It’s a little closer to following the rules, but in the end, it doesn’t pass.

Again, the third image has been correctly photographed and edited. It displays the entire product against a pure white background and, although it could be sharper, the image passes Amazon’s requirements for product ads.

As a recap, the first image in each lineup is a major fail on all accounts. In the middle images, sellers are getting the idea, but they haven’t followed all of the rules, and so these images, too, will be rejected by Amazon as well. The images on the right will pass muster, sell products, and ensure Amazon’s reputation as an e-retail superstar remains intact.

See Your Amazon Product Ad Through The Customers

There are plenty of e-books and how-to guides about selling products online. One of the most prevalent pieces of advice from top sellers in every genre is that sellers should step back and try to see their ads through the eyes of their customers.

When you consider posting an add, ask yourself: would you buy the product based on what you see? Is there something lacking that you would wish to see if you were the one shopping for this item? When comparing your image to other similar product images, would you choose yours over the competition?

Furthermore, think about this: your customers aren’t just judging your products. When reading Amazon’s online reviews, a disparaging remark about grainy, blurry, hard-to-see pictures is quite frequently paired with a negative remark about customer service as well, even if the customer service wasn’t particularly bad.

This is because bad quality images plant the idea in customers minds that they aren’t a priority. Customers tend to think that a blurry image equates to an uncaring seller who probably doesn’t offer good customer service. They think, “Meh, I’ll just take my business elsewhere… ‘Oooh, look at those pretty pictures!’”

Customers are only human and they tend to make snap judgments. Tech advancements keep making things faster and easier, so potential customers have been trained to make decisions quickly so that they can move on to something else. In an age when even a person’s cell phone can take beautiful, professional quality pictures, there is just no excuse, in a customer’s mind, for sub-average image quality. If you aren’t able or willing to invest in professional photography and lighting equipment and advanced image editing software, then Pixelz can help you to give your product photos that extra wow factor that will impress customers through your Amazon Product Ads, and keep them coming back time and time again.

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